Kitchen Cabinet Challenge #3: Day 3 - Staples everywhere!

So I got everything apart yesterday! I guess you could call this a euro style cabinet due to the way it has been assembled. I could be wrong. The cabinet was assembled with tons of staples and very little glue. The back had two support pieces and one large piece of hardboard for structural support.

Here’s a picture of my method for heating up and disassembling the frame and panel doors. I’m sure glad I made that mallet.

I mentioned before the use of pins to hold together the frames. Here’s the unfortunate side-affect to trying to disassemble something like that. Luckily, that will probably get cut off when I resize the doors.

It looks a mess, but here are all the door parts:

Now on to the cabinet:

Like I said, all the joints are tacked with staples and the tiniest bit of glue. I used a very small screwdriver and a ball peen hammer to pry the staples out and tapped the joint loose with the mallet again. I didn’t need to heat up these joints.

As you can see here, I discovered that the case is made up of veneer over mdf. I need to be really careful so I don’t crack the veneer where it’s not supported due to this shelf dado. I hope that this doesn’t mess me up when I go to cut the case sides down to 12”.

Here’s a pic of the back coming off and the shelf out.

The sides came off the face frame easily as the mdf sides “rip” nice like paper. I have a few staples still to remove. The last thing I had left to do was pull apart the face frame. I made sure to label the joints so I know how everything goes back together.

Here lies what once was a cabinet. Next I get to make sure all the staples are out so I don’t ruin my table saw blade and get to cuttin’.

3 comments so far

I started at day three and I was really confused about what you were trying to accomplish. I had to go back to day one to see the problem.

Sounda like a real challenge. Good luck. I assume that the only visable parts are the front, being the remade doors and the stile and rails of the cabinet. So it looks like a real challenge to get it back together.

-- I've been blessed with a father who liked to tinker in wood, and a wife who lets me tinker in wood. Southern Delaware karson_morrison@bigfoot.com †

is this a job for someone? or something your doing for yourself? looks like one of those jobs that cost more to fix than it is to buy new? But on the flipside, Sometimes i guess its gotta match…..it’s gotta